Viggo Mortensen has revealed getting to grips with different languages on his new film, Jauja, wasn't easy.

Jauja was made by an Argentinian director featuring Spanish and Danish, which presented some interesting challenges for the Danish-American actor.

"(It's) kind of strange: I would have thought it would be in Denmark where I work in Danish first," he said.

In the experimental film, directed by Lisandro Alonso and written by Fabian Casas, Viggo plays a 19th century captain searching for a mythical land in Patagonia. He also did the music for the movie.

The 55-year-old actor said he chose the film because he was impressed by the director's previous works, including Los Muertos and Liverpool.

Even though Viggo spent the first 10 years of his life in Argentina, he still needed to be careful to make sure he didn't mess up linguistically.

"It was a tall order in some ways, making sure the translation in Danish of the Argentine dialogue, Spanish dialogue, retained the poetry of Fabian's writing and the ideas behind it, you know, the sort of existential side of things, and the humour," he said.

"But it ended up being not such a hard thing and in a way it's funnier than what they wrote, because there's a particular sort of irony in Danish humour and sort of physical humour also that the Danes are really going to get - more so than other people because it's very particular," he added.